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So, you just bought a Zip drive!  Congratulations!

Soon you'll wonder how you ever survived without a Zip drive to help you manage your stuff.

You probably had something specific in mind when you bought your Zip drive. Maybe your hard drive was full. Perhaps you wanted an easy way to share stuff with others. Or, you wanted a simple, fast way to backup your computer -- or perhaps you want or need to do all three of these things! But, if you bought it just because it looked neat or because all your friends were raving about how great it was, that's OK too. There's no wrong way to buy a Zip drive.

But don't let your reason for buying a Zip drive limit you. Because a Zip drive is about removing limits.  The idea behind the Zip drive is versatility, helping you do what you want with your stuff.

With each 100-megabyte Zip disk, you can manage your stuff like never before.  In all areas of your life -- home, work, school, play and travel -- Zip disks help you create, organize, find, communicate, share, move and protect all your stuff.

Here are some ideas to help get you started (click an icon):


Home stuff

Remember when Wally and the Beav used to fight over control of the TV. Now Johnny and Tiffany fight for control of the computer. Everyone in the family wants to store their absolutely vital, highly personal stuff on the computer, which can make hard drive space evaporate. That's where Zip disks can help! Give each family member a separate Zip disk to store, organize and backup their personal stuff. Rover may even get one to store his pedigree and album of Great Fire Hydrants of The World.

Separate Zip disks do much to restore family harmony. No longer do you have to listen to Tiffany's complaints that Johnny is trying to hack into her diary or Johnny's grumbling that Tiffany's horse pictures hog too much space on the hard drive.

Put those software programs that you don't use regularly on Zip disks to keep them from cluttering the hard drive. On April 16th roll your tax software off to a Zip drive and put all those painful memories behind you for the rest of the year. Unlike floppies, Zip drives are fast enough that you can effectively run software programs directly from each Zip disk.

Home stuff activities

•	Make a family history on a Zip disk. Scan pictures and report cards, capture holiday videos, add vacation journals, news clippings, athletic awards. Soon you have a family album that everyone will treasure.

•	Send photos and video clips to family & friends on Zip disks.

•	Keep your photos on Zip disks. With the new digital cameras, you can crop, edit, identify and store family pictures electronically rather than keeping the family gallery in a shoebox.

•	Keep family calendars (vacations, band practices, football games, music lessons, birthdays and anniversaries) so that everybody knows what's happening when.

•	Use Zip disks to download whatever you want from the Internet -- think of Zip disks as catcher's mitts for all that Internet stuff!

•	Reduce on-line charges for Internet usage by downloading stuff from your favorite web site onto Zip disks and browsing them off-line.  It's faster this way too!

•	Use Zip disks to back up that monster hard drive that came with your new multimedia home computer.  Check out Iomega's new 1-Step Backup software for fast and simple backups on your PC.

•	Make space on your hard drive by moving older applications and games to Zip disks. With the supplied Iomega's AppMover, running stuff from Zip is a snap.

•	Use Zip disks to carry stuff between home and work.


Work stuff

No matter what kind of work you do, Zip disks can help you manage it better.  Whether it's clients or patients, brochures or ads, accounting or legal, Zip disks provide an easy, economical way to save, move and share your work with others.

General business stuff

•	Create personal, electronic file folders for individual clients or projects.

•	Free space on your hard drive by keeping less-used or older versions of software on Zip disks. With Iomega's AppMover, moving stuff to a Zip disk is a snap.

•	Upgrade older, capacity-limited computers with more storage. A Zip drive can be an inexpensive alternative to buying a new machine just to get more storage.

•	Make a Zip disk that contains your day-to-day programs and data. In today's world of home offices, mobile offices, or even no offices, you can have your critical stuff easily available anywhere.

•	Organize presentations on a Zip disk for easy access, at home or on the road.

•	Move those e-mails that could be useful someday off the server and onto a Zip disk. They're easy to access and your network manager will love you for it.

•	Provide standard presentations and other company literature to the sales force. Unlike CD-ROM, presentations on a Zip disk run faster and can be customized to the audience.

•	Maintain sensitive information such as financials, payroll, taxes and accounting stuff on Zip disks and keep them confidential. Use password protect to limit access just to those who really need to know.

•	Transfer large software and data files between headquarters and field offices.

•	Keep archive information in an easily retrieved format. Use the Findit program included in your Zip Tools software package to help you find the stuff you need, when you need it.

•	And, as long as you have a Zip drive, use it to provide the security and peace of mind that comes from a regular program of hard drive backups.

Click an icon for specific work ideas:


Marketing stuff
Marketing/advertising/promotion stuff

If you're involved in marketing activities, youve probably already discovered numerous ways to put Zip disks to use in your business. Service bureaus everywhere are adding Zip drives  making them Iomega Ready™ to accept your large graphic files for presentations, brochures or business stationery.  And, Zip disks are rugged enough to withstand the rigors of the US mail, so ship them with the confidence that your stuff will get to its destination safe and ready to be output.

•	Transfer approval copies or comps between client and agency. It's also easy to keep a project history to see what changes were made, when, and why.

•	Scan press articles or product photography and put them on Zip disks by category or product line.

•	File product brochures and press releases on Zip disks for quick-and-easy output whenever needed.

•	Use Zip disks for interactive demos as selling tools. You can do high-impact custom presentations at a fraction of the cost and effort previously required.

•	Make your own swipe file of concepts, ideas, great lines from other efforts: all those things that can trigger the creative process when the pressure's on.

•	Use one disk per account, campaign, project, ad or client.

•	Store all your clip art images on Zip disks.  This will keep the hard disk free of clutter and help you categorize and organize your clip art files and archives.

•	Keep your novel (every creative person has a novel in them) on a Zip disk, so you can add those memorable lines at the moment they strike rather than waiting until you get back home.


Legal stuff
Legal/accounting stuff

The Zip drive is ideal for information management in data-intensive professions. Law and accounting are two examples of fields where capacity, mobility and security are all especially important. Creative use of the advantages provided by the infinite storage and convenience of Zip can give you a key competitive edge.

•	Use Zip disks for security. Password protection keeps out the uninvited. Where client confidentiality is paramount, physically secure information by removing and locking up a Zip disk.

•	Keep client and/or account records physically separate by using dedicated Zip disks for each client.

•	Use Zip disks for mobility. Off-site work comes with the territory. You can load up worksheets, draft pleadings, templates, audit plans, whatever the tools of your trade are, to make yourself a more effective road warrior.

•	Collect and sort vital information. In these sorts of professions, your competitive edge can be your ability to make sense of millions of pieces of data on the spot, not just when you get back to the office mainframe.

•	Use Zip disks to provide an audit history which allows you to reestablish the sequence of events and evolution of results at any future time, should you need to.

•	Maintain a chain of custody for digital information. A logged and physically secured Zip disk is a great way of establishing that digital information has not been tampered with.

•	Use Zip disks for communication and distribution of large volumes of information when e-mail won't do: that monster spreadsheet that would tie up the line for hours, for example.

•	Keep large task teams informed by proving duplicate disks with the relevant status, including schedules, assignments, and background data, to each member.

•	Back up! Maintaining current backups is vital in sensitive time-critical environments where data loss may critically impact your success.

•	Archive on completion. Once all the hassles are over, Zip disks are an ideal way to store the results in a way that you can recreate the history when you want or need to for each client or project.


Scientific stuff
Scientific/engineering stuff

•	Maintain copies (both primary and backup) of large CAD/CAM drawings on Zip disks to keep your hard drive free for in-process projects.

•	Sort and archive large volumes of test data so you can sift for patterns in the data which may not be visible in small numbers of tests.

•	Keep sensitive research results on Zip disks so that you can maintain confidentiality yet share with others as necessary.

•	Keep software you use irregularly, but still need ready access to, on Zip disks. With Iomega's AppMover, you can run it directly from the disk without first having to transfer it to a hard drive.

•	Share larger quantities of data with other researchers than is feasible by just using the Internet.

•	Use Zip disks for software development and checkout on test data sets prior to general adoption.


Software development stuff

•	Keep software libraries and tool kits on Zip disks. Structure them to different functions or projects. Keep different disks for each operating system or environment.

•	Store complete code development/debug for each project in a controlled environment on Zip disks. Work where and when you want.

•	Keep an archive/development history of software evolution through various builds. Invaluable for debugging and code rationalization.

•	Archive each program safely on a Zip disk.


Real estate stuff

•	Make a home tour on a Zip disk for your hot out-of-town prospects. Let them see what you have to sell.

•	Use your digital camera to create a pictorial record of all listings on Zip disks. When clients want to know details about the kitchen, call up the picture rather than trying to remember the layout and paint a word picture.

•	Create your own brochures/presentations. Keep the framework on your Zip disk and then customize the end-product for each client or home.

•	Keep standard forms on a Zip disk and print them out when you need them, even off-site, rather than racing around trying to find them.

•	Create an interactive presentation for the office, the mall, or other high-traffic areas that highlights your offerings. Update at will.

•	Keep all your key files: listing histories, client files, contact lists, current mortgage quotes, correspondence, appointments, in one spot, accessible at home, in the office or on the road.


Medical stuff

•	Keep histories electronically in an easy-to-retrieve archival format.

•	Store electronic images digitally, in random-access, high-capacity, but economical storage.

•	Imagine a consult file that includes all relevant aspects of a patient's case: history, films, EKG results, lab work, etc. on one small Zip disk. You can even store billing information so the patient doesn't have to fill out all the forms again.


School stuff

Zip drives make managing your stuff for school easier, faster, and more fun. And, with the increasing use of Zip drives in school, you can transport your great masterpieces of the homework world easily between home and school without looking like a nerd carrying a multiplicity of books, notebooks, etc.  For college students and teachers/professors, Zip disks are ideal tools for cool approaches to serious teaching and research.

Higher education stuff

•	Collect relevant news from the Internet. Academic research is why there is an Internet. Use the Zip drive to archive and sort the newsgroup and mailing list posts that pertain to your research.

•	Transport work easily from dorm to class. The Iomega Guest program makes using a Zip drive with any computer a snap.

•	Prepare term papers/theses/dissertations on Zip disks. You can work on them anywhere. And printing becomes a snap when you can provide your work to the printers on a Zip disk.

•	Develop CAD/CAM and graphics-intensive projects on Zip disks with the capacity and speed needed for most applications.

•	Distribute review copies of papers complete with full graphics and supporting data.

•	Use Zip disks to assign more realistic homework/case studies/laboratory projects. Package a collection of source materials on a disk so students can learn to sift large volumes of data, prioritize input, and deal with conflicting information.

•	Load high-value or specialty software on a Zip disk so limited numbers of copies can serve wider audiences.

•	Use Zip disks to collect and archive information from data-intensive experiments  whether in chemistry or psychology.

K-12 Stuff

Some of the things the well-dressed student may want to keep on his or her Zip drive include:

•	Homework and projects

•	Multimedia presentations

•	On-line downloads (fun suggestions: research, graphs, pictures, graphics)

•	Cool games

•	Video clips

•	Schedules (fun suggestions: organizer, scheduler, calendar)

•	Lists (who's cute, who's not, etc.)

•	Diaries (or journals for those budding writer types)

•	Names, addresses, phone numbers for your fellow inmates (fun suggestions: contact manager)

And places you can use your Zip drive to get to your stuff include:

•	Holidays/vacation

•	Class trips

•	Tests (open-book only, of course)


Play stuff

Forget all those comments that computers are just productivity tools. A little levity and relaxation makes even the most focused. intense person into a more productive individual. Here are some ideas on making your Zip drive do double duty, as both a productivity enhancement and a way to restore your sanity. Special note: these suggestions are intended strictly for home application; any covert attempts to apply these tips to the work environment, even if they might ultimately make you a better contributor to the workplace, are firmly discouraged.

•	Move your games over to Zip disks and run them directly from there. That way they won't take up valuable space on your hard drive. And, most games will run faster on a Zip disk than they do from the CD-ROM.

•	Give each person in the family his or her own game disk. That way, Dad won't inadvertently overwrite Johnny's Myst script. And, Johnny won't need to know that Dad has been playing Flight Simulator when everyone thought he was working on the taxes.

•	Store Internet downloads. If you've taken up surfing, you know that it carries baggage, lots of baggage. All those acronyms: JPG, GIF, MPEG, WAV, etc., have one thing in common -- they hog disk space. Keep your downloads on Zip disks.

•	Let your imagination soar! You've always wanted to write, draw, or compose. Today there's good software to allow even novices to do any or all of the above. Use a Zip disk as your own personal storeroom to collect those creative musings that someday can be assembled into a complete work.

•	Reduce on-line charges by downloading stuff to a Zip disk and reviewing it off-line.


Travel stuff

Hardly any of us are as grounded as our parents were. While this may be a psychological assessment as well, it is primarily intended as a commentary on our mobility. We spend a lot of time on the go. And now, oh joy!, our stuff can go with us.  Take your important stuff with you wherever you go, whether it be work or vacation. Now the two even start to blur together.

A well-dressed traveling family can use their portable Zip drive, which hitches directly to their notebook computer, to take stuff on vacation.  Some things to consider taking include:

Work stuff (so the breadwinners don't lose touch)

•	Projects

•	Files

•	Itinerary/Contacts/Account Information

•	Presentations

School Stuff (so they kids get valuable content from this expansion of their horizons)

•	Homework

•	What I Did on My Vacation theme

•	Class schedules for those poor suckers left behind and their phone numbers so you can gloat to them

Fun Stuff (so everyone can maximize the return on his or her relaxation time)

•	Journal  to note what we really did, or, at least, how we'd like to remember it

•	Family History  it isn't fair to visit someone without bringing them up to speed on family accomplishments, whether they want it or not

•	Games

•	Great American Novel


Your idea stuff
Share your ideas!

There they are -- just some of the ways we can all use Zip drives for fun and profit, or for fun and games. But possible uses don't stop with this list.

As we said earlier, using a Zip is about removing limits. Take a chance and see what you can do with your stuff!

And, once you have a great idea, tell everyone about it. Share your ideas with us, and let us add them to this list. Maybe youll see your idea in the next version of Zip Tips!

Let us know how you're doing. Send e-mail to ILoveZip@Iomega.com.


Bundled software
To help you protect, organize, move, and copy your stuff, Iomega provides you with a wide range of easy to use utilities and programs.  A brief description of each is listed below, but, after you finish reading about them, try them out for yourself and see how easy they are to use.

Iomega Tools

Iomega Tools is a collection of disk/drive management facilities, including the first ever read/write disk locking and protection feature, disk format, drive sleep, write with verify, diagnostics, and hard drive emulation.

1-Step Backup for Zip/Jaz
(Microsoft Windows 95 users)

Iomega 1-Step Backup is an easy to use backup and restore program to protect all the stuff stored on your hard drive.  Establishing a consistent backup schedule is an important procedure for safeguarding your important information.  Hard disks can fail, rendering data inaccessible, and a "crash" can be caused by many things.  Computer viruses can damage or delete your stuff, and can be accidentally put on your computer from someone else's floppy disk, or by copying someone else's programs.  The most common cause of loss of information, though, is accidental erasure or changes.  Without a backup of all your information, you may have to spend many hours recreating your files, or, worse, the information may be lost forever.

Your information, and your time and effort, should be protected from loss. 1-Step Backup provides this protection.  If your information takes up more space than one Zip disk, 1-Step Backup will automatically tell you to insert another disk when needed.

Copy Machine
(Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 users)

Iomega Copy Machine allows you to easily make copies of your Zip disks, even if you only have one Zip drive.  You can make a copy to give to a friend or customer, make a copy as a backup, or make a copy to take to work or home.

No matter what your reason, Copy Machine helps you make copies of your Zip disks quickly and easily.

Findit
(Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 users)

Once you realize how easy it is to save stuff to your Zip drive, your collection of disks will quickly grow.  Iomega Findit allows you to catalog all your files and programs across all your Zip disks so you can easily locate your stuff in the future. You can browse and search for specific files without having to search every disk individually.  Findit will tell you which Zip disk to load into your Zip drive when you are looking for a file or program.

AppMover
(Microsoft Windows 95 users)

Iomega AppMover was developed from the MicroHelp UnInstaller program.  You may already have many old programs and games that you rarely ever use, taking up space on your hard drive.  There is no need to delete them from your hard drive and then reinstall them on Zip.  Just move them with AppMover and quickly discover how much new free space you have made available on your hard drive.  The best part is that you can immediately use them by clicking on the icons as usual, AppMover automatically resets everything for you.